Sawdust Putty

[Mike Hutchison]

Has anyone had any luck bleaching/chemically treating sawdust putty?
I'm referring to fine sawdust/sanding dust of the wood being used mixed with yellow glue.
Have also tried sanding dust from project and SuperGlue.
I use it on small holes or places where I can't get a sliver of stock or a plug into the area.
Lot of times it dries darker than the surrounding wood; recently tried about a 50-50 chlorine/water
mix. Just a drop applied with fine detail brush; all it did was discolor a small patch around hole.
Don't want to go back to store bought filler, tired of throwing out half or better of small cans
even if turned upside down and back.

[John K Jordan]

Don't want to go back to store bought filler, tired of throwing out half or better of small cans
even if turned upside down and back.

I can't answer your question about bleaching sawdust/yellow glue repairs. For wood turnings I use a trick I learned from John Lucas to fill in small voids such as tiny chips or tearout - wet sand with thin CA glue. The sawdust created mixes with the glue and fills the void. (The CA is applied to the sandpaper, not the wood.) Occasionally CA still tends to slightly change the look of base wood so in that case I either wipe the surface with a tiny bit of thin CA on a paper towel, feathering outward with the grain/figure, or wipe the entire piece with CA - practical on small turnings but perhaps not on a larger piece. Most of the time the repair is invisible.

As for wood filler drying out, I haven't tried it on filler but I've had great success keeping other things like finishes and CA "fresh" by displacing the air in the can with nitrogen or argon gas. For things where it is impractical to add gas then seal the lid, I put the whole thing in a sealed canister with inert gas. I have no idea how this would work with wood filler but the experimenter in me wants to try it...

Too bad filler doesn't come in tiny, single-use disposable tubes. I haven't looked, maybe it does.

JKJ

[Mike Hutchison]

John
Will try the CA on sandpaper approach
Thanks for input
As for the displacing air w/ gas; got plenty gas
but reasonably sure it is neither nitrogen or argon
Mike H.

[John K Jordan]

J...
As for the displacing air w/ gas; got plenty gas
but reasonably sure it is neither nitrogen or argon
Mike H.

I haven't tried methane.

[Stew Denton]

Mike, I am assuming you are trying to make the resulting filler a lighter color.

After it has been mixed with the glue and dried, the glue essentially seals the wood and protects it from the bleach, or from a stain for that matter. To get to the saw dust to be changed by the bleach, try the bleach on the saw dust befor mixing it with the glue. If you do that you will have to rinse the saw dust well after the bleach to get out residual bleach. After that let it air dry thoroughly, followed by low temperature (wild guess 125 F.) oven drying for quiet some time.

Stew